Exactly the Sort of Man I Wanted to Be

I'm sleepless for my last night in this Los Angeles hotel room, for good reasons and bad ones. I've finally given up the ghost and come out to the couch, where now I sit, writing in the dark. I write at night a lot, because I can't sleep a lot. Sometimes I just wish my head would stop making so much noise, my heart beating so loud in my ears when I press them against the pillow.

Tonight, music kept me awake, too.

Earlier this evening, I was fumbling through YouTube and somehow got caught on old Billy Bragg concerts:

This content is imported from YouTube. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

My friend Dylan introduced me to Bragg's music in university. There was something about Billy that found a place in me almost immediately. I was pretty left-wing back then and I liked his lyrics. (I must confess to having attended a Communist Party meeting, but just the one, mostly because the men and the women seemed to have pooled their genders along with their resources and ended up somewhere in a sad androgynous middle.) I liked his music, too. But mostly, I think, I liked him — this man with a thick British accent, an amplifier, and a forelock. He usually wore a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and jeans with rolled up cuffs. A pair of black boots and a green guitar. Billy was one of those men who looked timeless, as though he could have come from any age and could arrive in any other. Somehow, Billy Bragg could be everything to me.

I actually drew up some of his lyrics in green marker (to match his guitar) and put them on my residence door. They were from a song of his called "A New England":

I saw two shooting stars last night;

I wished on them but they were only satellites.

Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?

I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care.

At some point that year, Bragg came to Toronto. He came to play at a labor protest against the then conservative government of Ontario. A group of us walked down to Queen's Park in the center of the city. It was a cool, blustery day. There was a big crowd. Students, union folks, the usual suspects at that kind of thing. There were angry speakers who shouted through megaphones and black helicopters flying in the sky. It was all very chaotic and dark, as though we were all about to pitch ourselves off the side of a cliff.

Then Billy came on stage, just him, his guitar, and the songs he had written. He played maybe three or four of them — to be honest, I can't even remember what songs he played. But I remember I was transfixed. Everything else disappeared. He was just so pure, so good at what he did. He sang these beautiful, powerful, terrific songs that he had first heard in his dreams and then picked out on his guitar. Watching him play was like watching a kind of perfect inspiration, like watching an impossible design in a sketchbook come to life in front of your eyes.

I don't want to put too fine a point on it, but I watched Billy Bragg that day in the park, and when we walked back to our residence after, and I saw his words on my door again, I decided he was exactly the sort of man I wanted to be.

But somewhere between now and then, I lost sight of Billy Bragg, over the years and heads and protest signs. It must have been a slow break. I don't remember ever making a conscious decision to stop listening to him; I just did. All of his records are still in my collection; I just never pulled them out anymore.

And, over time, too, I forgot that feeling I had that day in the park. I forgot what I'd decided on my walk home.

Now, I have him again. Over and over, I've been watching a concert he gave in 1991, a few years before I saw him in Toronto. In it, he plays my favorite song of his, the one in the video above: "Tank Park Salute." It's a spare, heartbreaking song. It's the kind of story that we all aspire to write. And live, accompanied only by a woman on a piano, Billy's perfect. There's a kid in the crowd at the three-minute mark, and the look on his face is the same look I had on my face that afternoon at Queen's Park, and now I have on my face again in this hotel room. Billy's everything I can remember him being, as though he's been frozen all this time, just waiting for me to come back to him, when I needed him most, at four past four in the morning.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

This commenting section is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page. You may be able to find more information on their web site.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Esquire participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.